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Hitatchi suspend Horizon New Build

Hitachi has announced it will suspend work on a £20bn nuclear plant in the UK because of rising construction costs.

Picture: Horizon Nuclear

The decision puts thousands of jobs at risk if the Wylfa Newydd facility in Anglesey, north Wales, is scrapped.

The Japanese firm had been in talks with the UK government since June about funding for the project, which was being built by its Horizon subsidiary.

The government said it had failed to agree terms with Hitachi. The nuclear industry said it was “disappointing”.

About 9,000 workers had been expected to be involved in building two nuclear reactors, which were due to be operational by the mid-2020s.

Hitachi said the decision would cost it an estimated 300bn yen (£2.1bn) in expenses, plus another 300bn yen as “extraordinary losses”.

It said it was suspending the project “from the viewpoint of its economic rationality as a private enterprise”.

Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive of Hitachi’s Horizon subsidiary, said the Anglesey site remained “the best site for nuclear development in the UK” and that the company would “keep the option to resume development in future”.

The new nuclear plant had been intended to have a generating capacity of 2,900 MW and have a 60-year operational life.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said: “As the Business Secretary [Greg Clark] set out in June, any deal needs to represent value for money and be the right one for UK consumers and taxpayers.

“Despite extensive negotiations and hard work by all sides, the government and Hitachi are unable to reach agreement to proceed at this stage.”

The department added that the land was owned by Hitachi, which had indicated it wished to retain ownership while it discussed future options with the government.

Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said the government’s nuclear strategy was now “lying in tatters” and had “escalated into a full-blown crisis”.

‘Energy crisis’ fears

The news was greeted with dismay by the Nuclear Industry Association.

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the association, said it was “disappointing, not just for the Wylfa Newydd project but for Anglesey and the nuclear industry as a whole”.

“The urgent need for further new nuclear capacity in the UK should not be underestimated, with all but one of the UK’s nuclear power plants due to come offline by 2030.”